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Photo Gallery: Photographing Familiar Places

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High Line, New York City

Photograph by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel, National Geographic

Once you begin to look at the world for photographs, everything begins to take on new character and interest. You become differently aware of your surroundings, looking at them with a fresh eye. Your neighbors' gardens, the office buildings you pass every day, even common objects like coins or key chains—all can make compelling images.

The Caledonia is one of many apartment buildings newly constructed along Manhattan's High Line.

Jasmine Flowers

Photo Tip: Simple works of art are all around you. Sometimes all it takes is careful framing or shooting from a different perspective to bring out an arresting juxtaposition of shapes, colors, or textures.

Train Interior

An English version of a biography of Mao Tse Tung sits on a table in a train.

Photo Tip: When photographing still life compositions, you can rely on natural light alone if you position the subject near a window. Curtains soften the sunlight, and the natural shadows fall in the same direction.

Japanese Maple, Oregon

Photo Tip: Gardens are ready-made objects of beauty, but photographing gardens takes some careful crafting. Find something significant to catch the eye—a figure, a prominent physical feature, a pond, or a splash of color.

Water Lily Seeds

Photo Tip: When photographing gardens, find an element that interrupts a pattern. It might be one tree trunk of a different color or a protruding rock that breaks the symmetry of concentric circles in the water.

Portrait, Nebraska

Photo Tip: When you photograph fashion, every element of the photo—the model, the clothes, the hair, the composition, and even the angle—contributes to the vision. Think about the pose; make sure your model knows what you’re after.

Farmers Market, California

Photo Tip: What matters most when shooting food is that it should look fresh. The easiest photos are often the ones you get at outdoor markets, where street vendors may be cooking up sizzling local delicacies with ample sunshine to light your composition.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Photograph by Greg Dale, National Geographic

A young boy smiles at the dinner table on Thanksgiving.

Photo Tip: On holidays, look for the moments that express the feeling of the day and then make pictures that convey them. Flash might distract people and upset the holiday mood you want to record. Adjust your ISO and shutter speeds to allow you to use whatever light is available.

Christmas Tree

A glowing Christmas tree lights up a living room in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Photo Tip: One approach to shooting a tree with lights is to combine flash, ambient, and indoor lighting. The flash lights up the tree, and a slow shutter captures the lights on the tree. Here, the photographer does not use a flash but rather boosts the ISO.

Bath Time

Photo Tip: Being in the right place at the right time and having close-up, intimate access to your family is what home photography is all about. To get started, think carefully about what each member of your family likes to do. Does your daughter obsess over puzzles? Does your son do his homework at the kitchen table? Those moments don’t last forever. Seize the opportunities.